Jim was in town on business for a few days and thought he would try the local fishing with me today. What he didn’t anticipate was just how incredible it was to be! We began under cloudy skies for the first couple of hours but were soon in rain and drizzle for the remainder of the outing. Temps weren’t too bad with mid 60’s above the water and just about the same below. As for winds, well that was a different story. They pretty much switched direction about every half hour or so. I would have to say that we had just about every compass direction that there was! The fishing however was worth every bit of misery that « Mother Nature » dealt us. Pike of all sizes up to 5 or 6 pounds were caught on a multitude of baits and they weren’t what we were after. The walleye were the quest for today and they bit equally as well. We had fish mostly in the 4 pound or better class with several over 5 and a couple topping 6 pounds too. Rods were firing all day long with the longest wait about 10 minutes at worst. With the low clouds and rain falling they bit throughout the entire day and that’s what it’s all about! We had non stop action that you just dream about and by the time it was all over there had to be somewhere around 60 fish landed, or better. Fifteen of them were walleye and Jim was happy to take a couple of the smaller ones home with him for a dinner. Although it was a wet one, I wouldn’t have traded it for the nicest day of the year, for anything. I think I’m just going to fish on rainy days from now on!!

Norm was back again today, for the first time on this local lake and really looking foreword to catching some smallies. We had a beautiful day in the forecast with sunshine and temps in the 80’s predicted, along with a slight breeze from the east of about 5 knots. The water temps were about 64 degrees in most areas and actually hit 70 degrees in some others. I thought the top water bite would be hot so we began throwing lures on the surface for a while with only a few takers. I switched up to a jig and started catching just about everything that swims, but they were nothing to brag about. It wasn’t until Norm started throwing a shallow running crank-bait that the bigger bass started to come aboard and this was great to see. We refined the areas afterwards with some soft plastics and began catching even better fish with the largest going somewhere around 4.5 pounds. He caught a real mix of fish today with everything from perch & rock bass to smallies, walleye, pike and even a gar pike. Some of the smallmouth were post spawn while others were definitely in the pre spawn mode. I’m sure that if we had of been able to fish everywhere that I wanted today, we would have had plenty of big fish. Unfortunately with the tournament scheduled for this weekend, there were bass boats all over the lake and I was limited to the areas I wanted to fish. At least the season started a little early with the special « Catch & Release » fishing bumping the opener regularly set for this coming Friday. Overall a pretty good day with our best five fish going in the high teens. Can’t complain with that!!!

After trying out a local lake on the weekend with my wife, I was back on the water once again today. Ira, Marcus & Bert joined me in hopes of catching a few fish for their dinner and I knew just the place. By 7:30 we were trolling and well on our way to a very eventful day of fishing. When the first reel went off, it was a little disappointing as the fish only ripped line out and somehow came off for Ira. He did recover though when the second one fired and landed a beautiful 4 pound walleye. I was pretty sure there would be more to come aboard and continued in anticipation for the next one. It didn’t really take long before reels were screaming about every five minutes or less and all were fighting a mix of walleye & northern pike. Two more decent walleye of around the same size were landed before Ira topped all the others with an even larger one of five pounds plus making their total, four in the livewell. This went on for several hours before we relocated to another area nearby when it began to slow. There weren’t any more walleye landed, but there were plenty of pike caught on just about every lure we put down there. Even a few bass were taken in the afternoon when we switched up the day to casting! With the big tournament coming this weekend, there were boats everywhere and that made it difficult to pursue the better spots that I knew. For a change today, the weather was really cooperative with warm temps of 76 degrees and a light N/E wind of 5 to 10 knots. Sunshine was with us pretty much all day with an occasional cloud moving in from time to time. Water temps were around 63 degrees in most areas and on the rise in others. We really couldn’t have planned it better with the way that « Mother Nature » provided this spectacular day on the lake. All in all a very glorious day to be on the water and a few fish were caught as well!!

Well, after an unsuccessful attempt at booking up this week, Norm was back for another round of catch the lake trout! Everyone that was suppose to fish with me for these last outings had to cancel for one reason or the other and I wasn’t ready to head home quite yet. The fishing was just too good and Norm knew it after Monday’s unbelievable numbers day, so we hooked up around the same time and hit the water almost immediately. Although the weather wasn’t anything like it was a couple of days earlier, at least it wasn’t like yesterday’s monsoon and I was thankful for that. We were literally in the clouds with a misty rain falling and the lake blanketed with the foggy cloudlike system. The air temps were in the 50’s and there was no wind when we set the riggers out and began our troll. As with Monday, we had a quick hook up and the first fish of almost 22 inches was soon swimming in the live well for Norm’s dinner. He didn’t take any home earlier in the week and really wanted to try one or two from today. I wasn’t too worried about filling his request as this place was just too easy to fish! Shortly after the first fish I gave him a heads up before we went over the killer zone and he was ready. Just like each troll over this area, the rod popped and Norm was quick on the trigger. This fish however felt a little heavier than most and I thought we might finally have a really good one. To our surprise it was two fish with lips attached to each lure! They were a little shy of the slot size and both of them were returned unharmed. In a few short hours we were able to land at least a dozen of these lake trout and actually had another double header on the same rod once again. I kept one more trout due to the hook job as I was pretty sure it wouldn’t survive. I was right as it went belly up in the live well shortly after and died. When we had our fill of this, we decided to try casting once again and headed to another area a little further away looking for the browns. Oh they were there, but all we could do was look at them as nothing even attempted to follow our offerings even once. Norm even tried flies for a while with nay a touch! A few lake trout did come up from the deep water and a couple of them were taken on jigs but not the brown trout. They were just uncooperative and I didn’t like it! Off we went to another deep point and Norm hooked a real biggun from over 20 feet of water and I thought he might finally have one of those ghost browns. When it was close enough to the boat I caught a glimpse of the fish and it was definitely brown. Too bad the brown was the color from a smallie and not a trout as I slid the net under an almost 6 pound fish. A quick pic and back she went to the depths from where she came. She was a big pre spawn female and I didn’t want to interrupt her cycle by keeping her out of the water too long. We had to leave this area after we realized that the only thing here was bass and hit the other side of the lake and colder water. There we were having follows but only from lake trout and after an hour or so of this, just got fed up and also left. I spent close to an hour or so finally refining Norm’s fly casting skills enough for him to feel comfortable in his ability to present the fly and then we went back to lake trout trolling for the last hour of the day. This fishing is just too easy as we landed another half dozen lakers and missed several others before we called it a day. The last hoorah saw us leaving the lake around 6:30 P.M. totally satiated with the day’s outcome and Norm finally felt good casting with a fly rod. Overall a really great day despite the messy start in the clouds and plenty of fish were caught.

Norm was back for some more punishment today, but this time he was the punisher. We began our day shortly before 8 and were into the first laker less than 5 minutes after we set the lines out. I had just slid over one of my open water humps and told Norm to get ready because he was about to get hit. Five seconds later he jumped on the rod as it popped from the rigger and a 19.5 inch lake trout was soon being landed. All he could do was shake his head in utter disbelief as the fish hit right on cue! We weren’t only blessed with cooperative fish, but it actually looked like « Mother Nature » might give us a break today as well. Sunshine and light N winds along with temps in the upper 60’s were what we were going to be seeing and many fish too. In the next couple of hours there were a half dozen lakers landed and several other releases and lost fish along the way. Unfortunately with the north winds seemed to come the short fish and they all had to be released. The winds kicked up a little bit more and we were receiving a cold air now, shutting the fish down completely where we were trolling. I decided to try other areas closer to the wind blown shoreline, where I had seen the brown trout only a few days earlier. Norm wanted to practice his fly casting skills and decided to break out the fly rod and see what he could come up with. I threw a tiny minnow bait jig along the deeper breaks looking for those cruising trout as Norm worked over the mid depths searching for the active cruisers. Both of us had a few follows and I think I may have had a couple of trout hit as I casted to some of the browns I saw swimming. Unfortunately neither of us were able to get into any of them and all we could come up with were perch & rock bass along with an occasional bass. The winds kicked up a little more than we both wanted along this shoreline and I decided to switch lake sides to avoid the chilly air and see if we might be able to hook up over there. As with before, all we were able to accomplish on this side were followers once again and decided to give trolling another shot before we called it a day. Follows are great if you are a musky fisherman, but I want lips attached to my hooks! Apparently trolling was the ticket as Norm got into at least another half dozen or more trout once again and we even had a double header at one point too. In this batch of fish there were a few legal sized lakers up to 22 inches and I live welled them for Norm to take back home at the end of the day. By 5:30 we were calling it quits but not before we had another release and landed just one more. Norm decided that he wasn’t going to bring the fish home after all, so we released the lake trout after a couple of quick pics and were on our way. This day was full of action and he really got to see the riggers in operation before we head to Lake Ontario this summer in hot pursuit of the mighty King Salmon. Overall, a pretty good day with the weather holding out for us, this time!!